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Why I Like Obsidian

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Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#261

Post by 121789 »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #242
dustincoates wrote: post #41

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot). The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. An…

"I'm 99% convinced that no one actually _understands_ zettelkasten" Fixed that for you ;) For real, anyone interested should go read the original book (How to Take Smart Notes[1]) and you learn that it's not about creating backlinks between your notes (that's just a wiki or personal knowledge base). It's about capturing ideas inspired by your reading, etc. and linking them other ideas. Yes, building your own personal…

That was one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I went into it expecting practical advice and found mostly vague hyperbolic promises of the magical benefits. If the hypothesis was that this note taking method produces lower effort, higher quality output, then the author either didn’t use the system or the book is evidence against its effectiveness

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#262

Post by rchaud »

theshrike79 wrote: post #245
ssgodderidge wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. The barrier to using Obsidian can seem intimidatingly high before jumping in. I tried and failed a few different systems before I just started using the daily notes as scratch pads. From there, I figured out more and more slowly over time. I’m now at a kind of system that works for me, but probably won’t work for anyone else. This is the way.

Obsidian has the sama problem as Bullet Journaling does. It's really simple and not complicated unless you want it to be, but then you watch a video about one Mega User who is really into the System and get demoralised by the amount of crap and whizbangs you see.

Why would anybody get demoralized? Does the tool get the job done or not?

Your goals are not the same as the person making a Youtube video. Nobody's going to put down "Highly Proficient with Obsidian" on their resume in hopes of it giving them an edge in the job search.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#263

Post by rchaud »

fzil wrote: post #239
dustincoates wrote: post #41

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot). The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. An…

> And, please, don't buy one of these $500 Obsidian courses. It's weird how there's even a large enough market for all of these in the first place.

It started with Notion and Roam. There's a whole cottage industry of courses designed to make you "master" these tools. A lot of their users are in school or university, and given that the marketing of these tools is all about improving productivity, I can see why those courses sell.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#264

Post by FredPret »

jodrellblank wrote: post #230
FredPret wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a job where I needed tons of notes on hundreds of clients and dozens of subjects. Detailed technical notes with screenshots and code snippets and names and birthdays and to-do lists. I used OneNote. It worked brilliantly. Until my notebook file corrupted. Obsidian does the same job, but I miss the tabs. At least it’s all text files - no proprietary files to corrupt.

Lovehate OneNote; the easy paste and type and draw, all WSYWIG, is great. But it feels like a place to lose notes and never find them again. "OneNote for Windows 10" gives a weird hierarchy view of notebooks on the left, which slides into folders and pages; "OneNote" shows the same data as a dropdown list of notebooks at the top, tabs along the top for folders and tabs down the right for pages; why so different? And…

It's a brilliant product except for everything Microsoft-y about it

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#265

Post by rchaud »

rthkljlkrj wrote: post #45
dustincoates wrote: post #41

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot). The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. An…

The plugin ecosystem for obsidian is insanely large , and I say that not in a good way. I agree, just ignore all of that. Plain files and internal links, that's it.

It feels like WordPress. Core product is solid but minimal in features, expectation is for plugin developers to provide the rest. WordPress was FOSS though.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#266

Post by rchaud »

barbazoo wrote: post #259

Anyone know of an alternative that stores data locally and looks and feels a bit more like Notion? The plain list like note view is just so ugly and when I create a new note I'd want it to be in the context of whatever I'm currently looking at, not at the root. I know about tags and the graph view but it's just not what I need. There was a comment to a Notion related submission the other day that talked about somethi…

Was it anytype.io?

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#267

Post by rchaud »

kisamoto wrote: post #29

Obsidian is great. For those looking for an open source alternative (or don't want to pay the Obsidian fees for professional usage) check out Logseq: https://logseq.com/

Logseq really needs the ability to add YAML frontmatter (title:, date:) to the text files. Every text file created by Logseq has a starting bullet point (" - ") because it is an outline. But this makes it impossible to render the file as a web page in a Markdown-friendly CMS as they all require frontmatter at the start of the file.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#268

Post by n8henrie »

My setup is a little complex, but I'm very happy syncing plain-text notes between my Mac, several Linux machines, and my iPhone.

I'm still using (and loving) Notational Velocity on my Mac. Thankfully it's open source, so I was able to hack together arm64 support even though I don't know C/ObjC/C++ [0].

On my iPhone, I've been very happy with 1Writer, which has a similar interface, and is scriptable with JavaScript for power users.

I have NV configured to store plain-text notes that are stored in 1Writer's iCloud folder, so syncing happens seamlessly between them.

Finally, I sync that same directory with Syncthing to my Linux machines, where I mostly use neovim for editing.

The only feature that I'm often wishing I had is shared editing with my wife. At some point I whipped up some launchd scripts to automatically move notes tagged with `#shared` to a shared subfolder, but it never worked very well. Thankfully my wife is not really all that interested in sharing notes, so we just use Apple Notes when needed.

Tried Obsidian but was miffed at the inability to recognize / store as .txt files instead of .md (or perhaps it was vice versa) without a community plugin, and I prefer FOSS, so uninstalled after a couple days.

Have LogSeq installed but can't convince myself to use it, what I have fits my needs well enough. I'm also concerned about their funding model and the longevity of the project, the other side of the coin of FOSS I suppose.

[0]: https://github.com/n8henrie/nv [1]: https://apps.apple.com/app/id680469088

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#269

Post by rchaud »

mortallywounded wrote: post #247

I tried Obsidian for a while and the whole "second brain-thingy" until I watched a video about complex procrastination (basically, using tools like Obsidian as a means of not doing actual work). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKCC2uTbRc

Another term for it is "knowledge p*rn", basically getting off to the idea that you're learning by watching another power user video, or reading another blog post, instead of simply doing the work.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#270

Post by ElCapitanMarkla »

aprdm wrote: post #198
paradite wrote: post #128

Currently using Joplin with self-hosted NextCloud WebDAV. It has a couple of minor UI/UX issues, even with the plugins. Anyone tried both? How does Obsidian compare against Joplin?

I tried both and am using Joplin. Has less fuss around it and I focus more on simply taking notes .. the syncing is also cheaper and you can use for work

I've been using Joplin for over a year after spending too much time testing all of the options out there. Joplin's syncing sealed the deal for me, free and it works well. Obsidian was something like $100 USD a year just to get things synced to my phone.
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